Secrets of scaling my businesses

Entrepreneur | February 1, 2018

Thinking about an idea is easy. What is difficult is realizing the idea in actuality and taking that first step – action – in order to begin and then stay motivated and focused to dive into the madness.

If you never try, you will never know the potential and power of your ideas. But once you start, it is imperative to take necessary steps to grow your business. Scale it from one level to the next.

I’m going to share some powerful words that have helped me achieve successes in my businesses. These are not just words; they are the power, the motivation and the key secrets to scaling my businesses.

Discipline

Not only in business, but to achieve success in any area of life – personal, social – one needs to be disciplined. What discipline does is, it creates a rhythm in our day-to-day lives. Discipline helps us measure how much we have achieved. It guides us to be on track and not deviate from our set goals. Discipline is also a good way of introducing focus. For me, discipline is what helps me in staying focused on my goals. Even if there is a certain interruption in my day or week, I know what I’m supposed to be doing and get back to what needs my attention or what I was doing.

When I started my first business of wholesale for caterers in Brooklyn, I had to give up a lot of other things in my personal life, just so that I could be focused on my business. My second business, the Prime Grill Kosher restaurant was one of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York. I made it successful with discipline in all aspects: commitment to quality and flavor and by strictly maintaining kosher guidelines. That is discipline for me.

Consistency

From my experience, consistency is a key element for achieving success in any field. One cannot be working hard one day, performing well on one day and then take it easy for the next two days. Because your customers are going to need your product or service any day. You cannot predict when they will reach out to you. And you have to be ready when they arrive. Otherwise you have lost your customer to your competition.

Consistency doesn’t only mean opening an office everyday at 8am. Consistency also means maintaining the quality of your product or service. A little dip in the quality will harm the reputation of your business. For me, consistency is also the need to do one thing after another. Which is quite evident from my foray into different restaurants, and now a new business venture related to real estate consultancy.

Focus

Never lose sight of your goals. If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt the hard way, it is that one must never astray from the end goal. But before that, the most important thing is to set a goal. Without goals, one cannot reach anywhere. How can you chart a path, if you do not know where you want to reach?

When I was doing the Prime Grill restaurant, my entire focus was on that. Next, when I opened the Mediterranean-Asian fusion restaurant, Solo and a Japanese steakhouse, Prime KO, I did it with complete focus. And that is the reason why I could make these restaurants a big success.

Knowledge

For starting a business and running a business, one should have thorough knowledge about what one is doing. I was born and brought up in the butcher family and had gained a good understanding of meats. That got me interested in starting a business in that sector.

Knowledge increases confidence. I was confidently able to take a plunge in the meat industry because I was knowledgeable about my field of work. Attention to detail, which is one of the most essential elements of running a business successfully, comes with knowledge.

When I got into another business – the hospitality and restaurant business, what I first did was learn a lot about the industry from friends, business partners and mentors. I learned about areas that were totally new to me. For example, I learnt about cooking and storage. I didn’t need to, but having knowledge about each and every aspect of my business helped me in approaching the larger picture of my business with a more thorough perspective.

Learning

The day you stop learning, is the day you will stop growing. Processes, methods, and markets are changing rapidly. It is a must to demonstrate a level of comfort with continuous evolution, and hence continuously learning. Every day in my office teaches me something new. And it is the ability to grasp and recognize that leanring, that makes all the difference. The world is changing fast in every direction. And as a businessman I think, it’s a must to keep pace with the times. The only way to do that is by learning at every step.

Reflection

Imagine what would happen if one only kept working, without stopping to think, reflect and analyze their work? Reflecting on what you have done reveals your accomplishments, mistakes, possibilities and opportunities. I could enter the real estate business only because I have the ability to reflect on what has happened in the past. I see an acute gap of quality consultancy and an all round approach in the real estate industry, here in NY. That’s the gap that Allaham Consultancy aims to fill. And at every stage, we are going to make reflection a key process in our organizational functioning.

Predictability

I owe a greater part of my success to the habit of creating predictability or certainty in the day-to-day aspects of my life. How? Because by ritualizing the day-to-day activities of my life, I could go out into the unknown knowing that all the other parts of my life were in a particular way, the right way. It definitely gave me more space to perform and accomplish my dreams.

Business, as you see, is not only about having sound knowledge about the technical, management and financial aspects. There are a number of hidden facets and traits that build and form a business. Some of the things that I have mentioned above are so essential to doing business, that if you do not develop these simple, yet complex habits, achieving success can be difficult.